The Direction of Intention

If I need a reason to never trust driver-less cars, the difficulty I currently experience placing images in this blog gives me the excuse. My WordPress, without warning, flips images to the left. It only glitches with images from Kerri’s camera and only some images, not all. My reptile brain generalizes the instability across all technology: if a simple task, like importing an image, can make a sudden unwanted and unexpected left hand turn, then a driver-less car is capable of doing it, too. It’s a simple matter of survival.

It’s not like people are incapable of sudden unexpected left-hand turns. They are. The difference is that people have, at their stem, reptilian brains. Irrationality is expected. It’s in the fine print. Our cemeteries are filled with people who thought they could split their focus and text while driving. It’s possible to see human error coming, not so much when the steering wheel has nary a hand upon it. Besides, with the recent showing by the tech-bros, I don’t trust them to create anything that doesn’t have nefarious intentions. These are the minds that produced the phrase, “Democracy is inefficient,” as justification to support a despot. I’ll drive my own damn car, thank you very much.

And that brings me to flat bird feeders. It is an old technology used for attracting and feeding birds. One employs a flat feeder in order to sit in a chair and marvel at the birds snacking on the seed. “Don’t you love it!” we exclaim.

We did not have a flat feeder. It’s a simple box with screen at the bottom and filled with safflower seeds. The cardinals and house finches love it. We looked at several versions of flat feeders before deciding that we – even we – could build a simple box and staple screen to the bottom. We had wood in our scrap pile. We had screen rolled up and stored in the ceiling of the basement. We have a chop saw, a drill and a staple gun. We have jute. We have an old shower curtain hook for a hanger. We had all of the necessary ingredients for concocting a flat feeder. All are, in fact, old technologies. And, I know exactly what they are capable of doing or not doing. Sometimes the saw blades need changing or the staples need refilling. I respect them but I do not fear them. If they glitch I can generally comprehend the reason. I can also honestly assess my carpentry skill level which is basic. I am a theatre carpenter which means it needs to look good from a distance and only has to last as long as the production.

If you come to our house and find yourself in the backyard, you are welcome to admire our new flat-feeder from a distance. You won’t be permitted to get close enough to see the truth of the construction. I’ll make up stories that make you leery of stepping on the grass. Actually, I’ll confess my ineptitude but point out that the birds haven’t left a single bad comment in the comment box. It may be that they do not recognize the comment box as a comment box since I built it. No matter. The birds are not leery at all to dine at our flat feeder. Something I cannot say is true about stepping into a driver-less car or trusting the tech-bros to ethically police themselves. They would have us sit in the backseat of an immoral system, frightened, with no ability to take the wheel.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE FLAT FEEDER

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Filed under: Metaphor, Perspective, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: artistry, control, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, driverless car, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, story, studio melange, survival, tech bros, technology, the melange |